Internet Guide

Is your ISP Throttling your Internet?

Feeling that your Bittorrent downloads are slower than usual? Now you can check if your ISP is throttling your Internet speed by going to Google's Measurement Lab to test your connection.

Google Inc. and two nonprofit partners Wednesday launched a Web site that lets consumers test their Internet connections to reveal possible interference and traffic management by service providers.

The site, Measurement Lab, addresses a need among academics who want to gather data on how Internet connections work in practice. While the workings of the core Internet "highways" are well known and standardized, it's difficult to find out what happens on the network of an Internet service provider, between the "highway" and the customer's home.